Film
Film Analysis
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I tend to love coming of age films, domestic dramas films, films that stay with you because the characters are complicated but you see a beautiful character development arc, films that make you question what is socially correct (at what cost to the human condition), ensemble films, surreal films where reality isn't important.
Coming of Age films
Cinema Paradiso (1988)
Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thief (1948)
Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird (2017)- because it's a growing up film that doesn't shy away from the protagonist making mistakes and not being likable, but also disappointments of life; the complicated and entangled relationship with her mom; angsty adolescence and coming to terms with the first steps of adulthood
Greta Gerwig's Little Women (2019) - coming of age, the rosy sepia tone of childhood, disappointments and bittersweet negotiations of adulthood, of changing chapters of your life, of choosing yourself even when it's safer and more conventional to not do so, of how lonely adulthood can be.
Masaharu Take's 100 Yen Love (2014) - fucks up any notion of happy endings and of heroic triumph, a story of desperately wanting something to be other than who you are or the expectations of others, of trying really hard and not having things work out anyway.
Agnes Varda's Faces and Places (2017) - turns humans into giants; a magnifying glass to beautiful mundane details of life
Films with fantastic plots that have memorable world-building but focus on character and relationships
Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life (1998)
Ang Lee's magic realist Life of Pi (2012)
Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003)
Ensemble films with people helping you swallow the bittersweetness of life
Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters (2018) - questions what does it mean to be a family, gray area between what is socially correct and what is warm, loving, and happy between human connection, complicated characters that are not always doing the right thing but you're still rooting for them, and how messy but necessary it is to stay together.
Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Zany, wacky, dark comedy films
Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Delicatesssen (1991) - a dark comedy that stays with you. Director of Amelie, so there are lots of quirky, surreal.
Coen brother's Fargo (1996)
Rian Johnson's Brothers Bloom (2008)
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Thoughtful films that stay with you after you watch it
Christopher Nolan's Momento (2000) and Inception (2010)
Rian Johnson's Looper (2012)
Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring (2003)
David Fincher's Se7en (1995)
Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1998)
Alex Garland's Ex Machina (2014)
Chloe Zhao's Nomadland (2020)
Romantic comedies that doesn't take the genre too seriously
Peyton Reed's Down with Love (2003)
Peter Segal's Fifty First Dates (2004)